Summer Reading Program: Reading Road Trip!: Create Your Own Road Trip

There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in Jazz Age Chicago. But two murders that spring were special, or so believed Maurine Watkins, a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper." Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about clubs, cooking and clothes, but the intrepid Miss Watkins zeroed in on murderers instead. She made "Stylish Belva" Gaertner and "Beautiful Beulah" Annan--both of whom had brazenly shot down their lovers--the talk of the town. Soon more than a dozen women preened and strutted on "Murderesses' Row" as they awaited trial, desperate for the same attention that was being lavished on Maurine Watkins's favorites.

In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Working with an ex-homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery.

A modern-day mage and consultant to the police finds his stale life suddenly enlivened by the presence of a rival in the black arts.

The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes--sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous--Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery.

Anabelle Granger endeavors to promote her grandmother's matchmaking business by landing sports agent Heath Champion as a client, an effort that is challenged by Heath's arrogant nature and Annabelle's own unexpected feelings.

Presents a memoir of the author's cursed travels through the woods of Massachusetts and coastal Maine, describing his midlife transformation from an idealistic youth to an eccentric family man.

Mike Love tells the story of his legendary, raucous, and ultimately triumphant five-decade career as the front man of The Beach Boys, the most popular American band in history -- timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of "Good Vibrations." Love describes the stories behind his lyrics for pop classics such as "Good Vibrations," "California Girls," "Surfin' USA," and "Kokomo," while providing vivid portraits of the turbulent lives of his three gifted cousins, Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson.

Once again Dorothea Benton Frank takes us deep into the heart of her magical South Carolina Lowcountry on a tumultuous journey filled with longings, disappointments, and, finally, a road toward happiness that is hard earned. There we meet three generations of women buried in secrets.

Tully Mars finds himself regretting a decision to help find the missing lens belonging to the Cayo Loco lighthouse, in a tequila-inspired adventure featuring such characters as Indian shaman Ix-Nay and boatman Captain Kirk.

When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating.

Three friends at a crossroads in their twenties quit their high pressure New York media jobs, leave their friends and everything familiar behind, and embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world.

A laugh-out-loud account of an outrageously rugged hike--by the beloved comic author of Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island.

Traces the author's recreation of Hiram Bingham III's discovery of the ancient citadel, Machu Picchu, in the Andes Mountains of Peru, describing his struggles with rudimentary survival tools and his experiences at the sides of local guides.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project comes a story of taking chances and learning to love again as two people, one mourning her husband and the other recovering from divorce, cross paths on the centuries-old Camino pilgrimage from France to Spain.

Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.

Chronicles the off-beat and occasionally extraterrestrial journeys, notions, and acquaintences of galactic traveler Arthur Dent.

The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope--something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don't decelerate. Spaceships do. A flurry of top-level government meetings conclude that whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete. A conclusion the Chinese definitely agree with when they find out. The race is on...

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force, which shields the home planet from too much knowledge of the ongoing war between Earth and alien civilizations. What's known to everybody is that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve your time at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal.

Valena Walker is a dedicated master's student in geology headed to Antarctica to study glaciology with the venerable Dr. Emmett Vanderzee. But when she finally arrives at McMurdo, she discovers that her professor has been arrested for murder, and what's more, that the incident happened a year ago. A newspaper reporter who'd visited Antarctica the previous winter had died from exposure, and though no one was a fan of the guy, by all accounts, everyone was devastated to lose someone on the ice. Valena quickly realizes that in order to avoid being shipped north immediately and having her grant canceled, she must embrace the role of detective and work to clear his name - and save herself in the process.

The body of a beautiful seventeen-year-old Zulu girl, Amahle, is found covered in wildflowers on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains, halfway between her father’s compound and the enormous white-owned farm where she worked. Detective Sergeant Cooper and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala soon discover that Amahle’s life was woven into both the black and white communities in ways they could never have imagined. Cooper and Shabalala must enter the guarded worlds of a traditional Zulu clan and a divided white farming community to gather up the secrets she left behind and bring her murderer to justice.

Targeted by McCarthyism for his prewar politics, a young Jewish writer who fled the Nazis to America makes a desperate bargain with a fledgling CIA to work as a spy in a decimated Berlin.

When Brazilian novelist Beatriz Yagoda suddenly disappears, her American translator Emma travels to Brazil to solve the mystery while fending off rapacious loan sharks and the washed-up editor who made Yagoda famous.

It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi's unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera--a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron's Heartburn.

In this funny, frank, and tender new memoir, the author of the New York Times bestseller A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a pizza restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.

"Let’s say I was born when I came over the George Washington Bridge …" This is how we meet unforgettable Tess, the 22-year-old at the heart of this stunning debut. Shot like a bullet from a mundane past, she’s come to New York to escape the provincial, to take on her destiny. After she stumbles into a coveted job at a renowned Union Square restaurant, we spend the year with her as she learns the chaotic, punishing, privileged life of a “backwaiter,” on and off duty. Her appetites are awakened, for food, wine, knowledge and experience; and she’s pulled into the thrall of two other servers–a handsome bartender she falls hard for, and an older woman whose connection to both young lovers is murky, sensual, and overpowering. These two will prove to be Tess’s hardest lesson of all.

Working as a public relations hotline consultant for a once-prestigious culinary magazine, Billie Breslin unexpectedly enters a world of New York restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors while reading World War II letters exchanged between a plucky 12-year-old and James Beard.

Explains how Billy Beene, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is using a new kind of thinking to build a successful and winning baseball team without spending enormous sums of money.

Holly Swyers turns to the bleachers of Chicago's iconic Wrigley Field in this unique exploration of the ways people craft a feeling of community under almost any conditions. Wrigley Regulars examines various components of community through the lens of "the regulars," a group of diehard Chicago Cubs fans who loyally populate the bleachers at Wrigley Field. In a time when many communities are perceived as either short-lived or disintegrating, the Wrigley regulars have formed their own thriving set of pregame rituals, ballpark traditions, and social hierarchies.

A graphic novel-style history of baseball-- providing an illustrated chronological look at the major games, players, and rule changes that shaped the sport-- presented in fun, easily understood chunks perfect for casual and diehard fans alike.

Pitch by Pitch gets inside Bob Gibson's head on the evening of October 2, 1968, when he took the mound in Game One of the World Series against the Detroit Tigers and struck out a record seventeen batters. Gibson, known as one of the most intimidating pitchers in baseball history, relives each inning and each pitch.

In 1923, the losing New York Yankees played their first season on their own field, and everything changed. Babe Ruth bounced back from a contentious season to carry the team to their first title. This is the untold tale of the Yankees' breakout season.

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. Ursula dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she?

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply—but that almost seems beside the point now. Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She knows that Neal will be upset with her, but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go without her. That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. . . Is that what she’s supposed to do? Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

When a time-travel lab suddenly cancels assignments for no apparent reason and switches around everyone's schedules, time-traveling historians Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves in World War II, facing air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control.

Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South.

This project is a collection of scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Latin American music that have been translated into English from their original issue in Spanish or Portuguese. Each chapter was written by a Latin American author and published between 1986 and 2011. Each has been chosen as representative, outstanding, or influential in some way to the field of Latin American musicology.

On the ground with the talent, the townspeople, and his handpicked crew, Woodstock organizer Lang had a unique and panoramic perspective of the festival which became legendary. Enhanced by interviews with others who were central to the making of the festival, this book tells the story from inspiration to celebration, capturing all the magic, mayhem, and mud in between.

The 1930s saw Havana undergoing a seismic cultural renaissance. At night in theaires libres (open air cafes), tourists and foreign investors rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway as they sipped cocktails, cavorted with Cuban beauties, and listened to suggestive melodies from Havana's unmatched musical community. It was rare for women to attend, and unheard of for them to perform. But when greengrocer Matias Castro, father of thirteen, goes bankrupt, his eldest daughter has the idea of starting an all-girl band with her sisters-an outrageous idea in macho Cuba, but a surefire money maker.

Two ambitious young musicians are drawn into the dark underworld of blues-record collecting while navigating the fallout of a scam involving one's claim that a viral video of an unknown singer is a long-lost recording of a famous blues musician.

Colby's post-high school plans have long been that he and his best friend Beth would tour with her band, then spend a year in Europe, but when she announces that she will start college just after the tour, Colby struggles to understand why she changed her mind and what losing her means for his future.